I don't understand. Why would it be a conspiracy? I don't think Canonical intentionally let their forum be compromised; it was just poor systems administration. They didn't keep up with security patches for their forum software. As for Ubuntu Edge, they have obviously been planning this for quite some time. It has probably been in the planing stages at least since Canonical announced the first public preview release of Ubuntu Touch. A campaign like this takes a lot of time and resources to pull off. They may have pushed it up by a couple days, but it is too well organized for the campaign to have been initiated well ahead of schedule just to bury their forum compromise with good publicity.

BTW Regardless, it looks as if the Ubuntu Edge is on its way to earning enough funds to be produced.

I wish sites like these would show a graph of the donated money over time. but then they would probably scare of peopl from donating as they realize the flow of money is slowing down and at the rate they're hitting it's not going to make it.

Sorry, guys, I just thought it was strange timing. I wasn't meaning to suggest it was Canonical behind it (if there were any "it" there--again, could just be coincidence). It would seem that, if it were a conspiracy, it'd be someone who wanted the Ubuntu phone thing to fail or something.

While I still don't think it's a conspiracy, that is an interesting take on it. I didn't even consider the Ubuntu forum hackers to be the ones behind a conspiracy to make the Ubuntu Edge campaign fail. I still think that's an unlikely scenario considering that no one outside of Canonical knew about the Ubuntu Edge or indiegogo campaign before their press release (as far as I know). However, I find it slightly more plausible than Canonical being behind a conspiracy like I originally thought you were suggesting.

I wish sites like these would show a graph of the donated money over time. but then they would probably scare of peopl from donating as they realize the flow of money is slowing down and at the rate they're hitting it's not going to make it.

Always the optimist eh? Maybe the entire POINT of not showing any such data is to maintain a positive appearance and encourage people to donate. It's not like people are actually committing their money before the target is reached, so why produce any kind of data to discourage donation?

As others have said, I don't think there's any conspiracy. I can't imagine a company like Canonical would have the capital to commit to such an adventurous project without outside assistance, and I'd say an IndieGoGo campaign is a good way to go about it, even if just to promote their façade that they're a "friendly" company.

To anyone seriously interested in this, I recommend that you listen to this week's Linux Action Show. Chris and Matt dedicated a good portion of the show to talking about the Ubuntu Edge campaign. They did not suggest a conspiracy like the OP, but they did discuss what the fallout of the campaign failing might be and why Canonical (and Mark Shuttleworth in particular) decided to use indiegogo to fund it. Obviously the hosts of LAS have a slight bias, but they did try to analyze the situation as objectively as possible. It is definitely worth a listen in my opinion.

"Yet here is Canonical, an established enterprise software company that counts Google among its customers looking to avoid any potential risk associated with developing a new product and only reap the rewards. Shuttleworth said that the firm didn't want to get into the hardware business and crowdfunding was a way of gauging what people wanted, but he also said that one investment bank was working with Canonical to deploy thin clients, revealing just how much of a money spinner this could be for Canonical."

"Canonical and Shuttleworth have managed to generate a lot of press by using the crowdfunding method, but it signifies a certain lack of faith in an "official" Ubuntu OS smartphone and could highlight a worrying trend of established and well funded companies abusing the spirit of crowdfunding to offload risk. Shuttleworth might excuse this as an exercise to see how many people really want a smartphone that can also become a thin client, but the firm really should focus on getting its Ubuntu mobile operating system working with smartphones built by existing manufacturers rather than asking individual prospective customers to fund what after all could end up being a half-baked device in nine short months."

People are being played by an established for-profit company, not some start-up. Canonical isn't investing one red cent into this, but they will surely enjoy any profits. What does that tell you?

I don't think that's necessarily true. I'm paraphrasing, but a point brought up on LAS was that a successful campaign will give Canonical a much stronger bargaining position with potential partners because they have proven, committed interest from the community. That is something they could not get by funding the whole thing themselves. Canonical will surely be investing their own resources into this project as well, especially for the substantial initial development necessary to make the Ubuntu Edge a reality, but it would be much more difficult for them to pool investors after-the-fact. I'm not sure that I agree that Canonical should have started the campaign in the manner in which they did, but I don't think it signals a lack of investment on their part.

Basics of economy, if they can't prove there's a market for their product, and thus investors won't invest... well, then there's no market for it. which is what the kickstarter campaign is showing now.

you have a bunch of people who bought the "free" phone donation because lure investors has already put in hundreds of thousands to get them in. but the majority if single investors are in the pocket change category of 5-30 dollars.

in any case even if they by some last days push manage to somehow reach their goal. the whole project is a loss if they used real investors. they'd only be able to do it because a relatively low number of big investors put in a large amount of money. making it a in total loss for those donators. the relatively low number actually willing to pay what the phone is worth would never have been enough to pay for the phone in regular investment.

Canonical isn't investing one red cent into this, but they will surely enjoy any profits.

Yes, because the entire mobile OS and software and hardware design for the Edge surely manifested itself out of thin air prior to this campaign, right? Even if they reach the goal, they'll probably make barely enough to cover the costs of production itself, not counting the aforementioned work leading up to the production. Mind you this is a limited run production exclusively for people who decide to fund it, so it's not really hard to do the math.

What this campaign could potentially do for them is create interest in the platform, which is their long term goal. But accusing a company that is yet to make a profit (Mark Shuttleworth is still personally financing the company for the most part) of playing their users is really not fair.

Basics of economy, if they can't prove there's a market for their product, and thus investors won't invest... well, then there's no market for it. which is what the kickstarter campaign is showing now.

you have a bunch of people who bought the "free" phone donation because lure investors has already put in hundreds of thousands to get them in. but the majority if single investors are in the pocket change category of 5-30 dollars.

in any case even if they by some last days push manage to somehow reach their goal. the whole project is a loss if they used real investors. they'd only be able to do it because a relatively low number of big investors put in a large amount of money. making it a in total loss for those donators. the relatively low number actually willing to pay what the phone is worth would never have been enough to pay for the phone in regular investment.

Now this is truly conspiracy worthy. Surely if they wanted to cheat their way through it, they could've easily done it by now and even brag about a record breaking campaign, instead of letting the funding slow down, as it has in the past few days.